Missouri sources - get them while they're hot...

A couple of URLs that come to hand: an interesting-looking essay entitled Reform and the Erosion of Representative Government in Missouri, 1900-2000 on the Missouri Secretary of State's site.

And the first chapter of The Upset That Wasn't: Harry S. Truman and the Crucial Election of 1948 by Harold Gullan, which, in 10,000 words or so, covers Truman's career down to being chosen by FDR as his running mate in 1944.

(This last comes under the Google Print facility - which may mean it's in danger of disappearing at any moment, I suppose.)

I've done no more than glance at the chapter; but one thing that was new to me was the fact that, in his infamous 1940 Senate re-election bid - against Lloyd Stark, the ever-loyal Rooselvelt's engine for shafting him - Truman, erstwhile tool of the by then ousted Kansas City boss Tom Pendergast, was supported by the St Louis machine of Mayor Barney Dickmann and county chairman Robert E Hannegan (by the latter, at least.)

Stark was a flake - who apparently went to the 1940 Convention under the impression he might secure the Vice Presidential nomination! - and the vote in the primary was split by the intervention of the DA who prosecuted Pendergast for Federal tax evasion, Maurice Milligan. Even so, the winning margin was only 8,000 votes in 660,000 cast.